I have eaten the pork belly, and suddenly I comprehend the zealot’s gleam in Heath Putnam’s eyes when he implores buyers of his Mangalitsa pigs not to trim the fat. This fat-laden cut — belly with some small ribs — is sinfully rich and salty-sweet. By the time it left its slow braise and joined some glazed turnips and Brussels sprouts on the plate it was practically pork candy, or the pig equivalent of foie gras. It was so tender and moist it fell apart at the touch of a fork.
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This was my family’s first experiment cooking a Wooly Pigs Mangalitsa pork chop from the first batch sold retail in the U.S. The challenge, after reading these warnings, was to get the most out of the luxury meat without toughening or over-drying it.
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I turned to The Bread Baker’s Apprentice for my first stab at bagels. I’ve had good successes in the past with Peter Reinhart’s recipes, although, given the limits of my oven, I’ve leaned more toward things like cinnamon rolls than his slow-risen artisan loaves. (I feel like I’m cheating on Reinhart every time I make no-knead bread.)
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The more I bake the more I have wondered if all-purpose flour isn’t, as some cooks insist, more like “all-compromise flour” – a lowest common denominator that’s good enough for lots of things but not the best for any of them. This all came to a head around the holidays this year — not because of the holiday baking so much as all my Christmastime reading of the new King Arthur Flour catalog. I broke down recently and had a blast ordering different flour varieties and baking supplies and preparing to test them out. When I unpacked diastatic malt powder, I swear it felt like it must feel pulling an iPhone out of the box.
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The February issue of Cook’s Illustrated comes up with a way to improve on the insanely popular No-Knead Bread recipe that Mark Bittman printed in The New York Times in 2006. (The recipe was developed by Jim Lahey of Manhattan’s Sullivan Street Bakery.)
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